


must have been loved up there

by TinyValiance



Category: iKON (Korea Band)
Genre: Angels, Cherubim, Extended Metaphors, Happy Ending, Healing, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Open to Interpretation, Suicidal Thoughts, a small healing ficlet, the setting is more like an extended metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 17:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12916338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyValiance/pseuds/TinyValiance
Summary: Hanbin sat on the ground in an endless forest of peach blossom trees and sun shining through the sturdy and translucent boughs.





	must have been loved up there

**Author's Note:**

> ♥ PLEASE READ! THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME!♥
> 
> 1\. I want to make it clear that these people in the story are just characters based on real people. This is my interpretation of them. My writing does not reflect on any real people involved in this story. Please do not repost this story anywhere or post a link to this story anywhere. Tumblr is the only exception. I do not want it on Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere a member of iKon or any other kpop star in this story can see it (if they see it on Tumblr, then whatever, Tumblr feels more private). Do not send this story to them. Please keep this story safe here! Respect their privacy and mine.
> 
> 2\. WARNINGS: implied suicidal thoughts.
> 
> 3\. Please comment! No matter how long the story is up, I will always appreciate comments. I love all feedback. Nice comments are appreciated more than you know. Also, I am not perfect, I want to improve! If you think I could do something better in terms of characterization, grammar and wording (etc), please tell me.
> 
> 4\. The whole story is up for interpretation in terms of symbolism. I hope you get something out of it. Take care and thank you for reading! xo
> 
> ~
> 
>  
> 
> "When you feel alive  
> Just don't be afraid  
> You are not alone."  
> \- Forrest Gump, Paloalto

Peach-coloured petals twirl as they fall to the ground.

It was afternoon back when Hanbin decided to go out into the forest. He was dressed in a grey sweater and a baggy white shirt, black sweatpants and black running shoes. His hood hung over a black snapback with the snap front-facing. He held his hands in his pockets. It was all colour palette but no suit. It was unceremonious.

Today he sits on the grass where the sun shines through the peach-coloured trees. He tilts his head up toward the sun and basks in it.

It was afternoon back when Hanbin ventured deep into the forest with his eyes cast down, hands shoved deep into his pockets. It was afternoon as he trekked the expanse of brown and green in search of the blue he heard rushing in his ears. It was afternoon when suddenly the ground below him was spotted pink and orange.

Today he sits on the grass where the light shines through and he holds pink and orange petals between his fingers. He smiles. There is warmth all around him.

It was afternoon when he finally looked up and the forest was full of flourishing peach-blossom trees as far as the eye can see – endless, impossible. Hanbin’s lips parted as his jaw dropped. A boy walked out from behind one of the trees, peach blossom petals in his hair and sunshine on his cheeks. He was burning white.

Peach-coloured petals twirl as they fall through the sunlit spotlight and land between Hanbin’s fingers. Bobby sits next to him and smiles.

-☼-

“I’m Bobby,” he had said that afternoon, back then. He smiled as though he was keeping something in the pocket behind his bottom lip.

Hanbin took his hood off to make sure he was getting all of his. He looked around, spinning to get a panorama view. Peaches grew on trees like cherries and its flowers blossomed on the boughs to match the creamy colour of its fruit. Hanbin was in awe.

Bobby asked, “What’s your name?”

Hanbin blinked back into reality – sort of – and looked at Bobby. A lick of fire teased his heart. “Hanbin. Has this always been here?”

“It’s mine,” Bobby responded. “It’s yours.”

Hanbin raised his eyebrows. Was it a business project? “Did our dads do this?”

Bobby smiled. “Just mine, but He only provided the seeds. I planted this... for, uh, for _you,_ I guess,” he smiled shyly, “because you’re here.”

Hanbin’s jaw dropped again. “Wow…” he blinked in awe. Lucky him, he supposed. “So you’re a landscaper?”

Bobby shook his head. “It’s ours, only ours.”

And for a moment Hanbin stopped breathing. Bobby stepped forward. Hanbin did not step back. A petal twirled down from the peach tree and landed on Hanbin’s eyelash. He batted it gently away.

Bobby stopped in front of him and said, “And because you’re here… your presence means something, for us, because you wouldn’t be able to be here if we weren’t, ah… a match.”

Hanbin waited for an explanation.

Bobby said, “ _Everything_ in this forest is ours.”

Bobby looked Hanbin up and down. Hanbin took it as an invitation to do the same to Bobby. He felt fire again, this time in the pit of his stomach. The scent of peach wafted into his nose and settled on the back of his tongue. He understood; ~~everything,~~ _everyone_. _Each other’s_. He swallowed.

The white glow around Bobby burned Hanbin’s eyes and they watered as he thought aloud, “I’m already dead.”

Bobby held Hanbin’s face in his hands. “No,” he said. “You’re not.”

_You’re not dead._

_You’re alive._

_You are still alive._

And Hanbin realized that was the whole point.

-☼-

Hanbin lied back in a pile of peach-scented petals, soft as silk to the touch. He could sense the texture even below the fabric of his hoodie (a different hoodie today, as some time had passed). Bobby lied down beside him.

A cherub. Bobby was a cherub. Only half-cherub, though, as his mother was human. Hanbin had nothing to believe in and this certainly was not the worst he could.

Hanbin asked, “Did you live in Heaven?”

“Mm…” Bobby sounded like he was thinking. “Maybe at some point. I don’t know for sure.”

Bobby picked up a handful of petals and watched them delicately fall out of his hand and back onto the forest floor. Hanbin asked for more information.

Bobby sighed. He said, “I lived with other angels for most of my life. I did live on Earth though, just… another part of it. It’s hard to explain.”

Hanbin asked, “When did you get to this part of Earth?”

Bobby swallowed. “I got here around a year ago. I’ve been living with my half-brother. He’s all human.”

Hanbin nodded and looked up to the pink and orange-petaled boughs, inky streaks of translucent colour to buffer against the sunlight. He was okay with dreaming if this was the dream. He was okay with believing it was real. And if this was some other place, he was okay with this being Heaven.

“Do you go to school?” Hanbin asked.

“I’m going to enroll,” Bobby said. “I’m going to have to get a GED first, though. I’m not stupid, but there’s no high school for angels.”

“So you just got dropped here?” Hanbin asked. “Or did you, like, choose to move out?”

After a moment, Bobby said, “I chose to move out. I chose the human part of me.”

Hanbin scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. “Why?”

Bobby laughed, light-hearted, all air and no humour. “Ah, right,” he said, “you have no idea.”

“No idea of what?”

Bobby turned his head. “How special it is—”

Hanbin turned his head to face Bobby. Bobby held Hanbin’s hand, laced their fingers together and trapped a peach blossom between them.

“—how special you are.”

-☼-

They walked along the forest floor eating ice cream. Hanbin wore a red sweater today, colour fading from time.

The ice cream was peach-flavoured, and Hanbin was starting to wonder how much of the world – or supermarket – Bobby had seen so far. “It’s good,” Hanbin commented, spooning more into his mouth, “but what’s with all the peach?”

Bobby shrugged, eating more ice cream of his own. “I like it.”

They sometimes walked together, but they mostly sat. This felt casual. Hanbin had done this exact activity with other friends. Bobby was not a friend, he was much more, but this felt normal. This felt like it could be his life. Hanbin felt like Bobby could be the rest of his life, in whatever form.

“Did you make this?” Hanbin asked. Bobby nodded. Hanbin asked, “How?”

Bobby shrugged. “With peaches and milk and ice and stuff.”

“And angel magic?”

Bobby snorted a laugh, brought the back of his hand up to cover his mouth. “Uh… I don’t think so. I don’t know if I can still use that. It’s a blessing and I kind of gave that up. I have to earn it now, like everyone else.”

Hanbin asked, “Where did you get the milk and stuff?” He thought that maybe if Bobby could make peach trees like cherry blossoms, he could whip up a milk stream for ice cream. It would not be totally weird, considering everything.

Bobby said, “The store.”

“So you _do_ go places.”

Bobby side-eyed him. “I do _have_ a life outside of here. I gave you my address.”

Hanbin still had not checked if that was real. He was not sure if he wanted it to be real or not. He was not sure which would be worse.

They came across an opening in the trees where the light shone in a perfect circle. Bobby eagerly ran to it, dropped and rolled over. Hanbin smiled. He joined Bobby and plopped down on the forest floor.

Bobby looked over at Hanbin. Hanbin could not tell if he was squinting against the light or if he was just smiling that wide. Hanbin’s lip twitched at the corner, pulling into something involuntary, something drawn upward from the core of his being, where for a long time no happiness had lived. It was a strange and forgotten motion. Love had been completely unknown.

Bobby laughed shyly, a jerky and hiccupy thing. Hanbin almost wanted to pat his back to make sure he was not choking. Bobby rolled onto his stomach to hide his face.

Hanbin asked through his smile, “Why are you hiding?”

Bobby, still giggling, shook his head. Hanbin continued, “Come on out, baby…” and pet Bobby’s head.

Slowly, Bobby turned to face Hanbin, but there was no smile on his face. His cheeks were the same colour as his pretty pink pouted lips. He was surprised.

Hanbin realized what he had said. He swallowed down any other words.

Hanbin set his empty cup of ice cream down and grabbed one of his ankles, sitting cross-legged. After a moment, Bobby shakily reached out to take one of Hanbin’s hands in both of his own. Looking down at clam he made of them, he lowly said, “ _Baby._ ”

Hanbin felt a chill run down his spine. Or maybe it was not a chill? What should he call it? The chill felt hot.

-☼-

Old stone crumbled below his feet, soles of his shoes breaking off small, fragmented pieces of the steps as Hanbin walked up the stairs to Bobby’s apartment. He followed the directions exactly, ending up on the third floor. He looked up at the gold-plated number on the door and a peach petal fell out from behind his ear. He swore he felt another petal in his shoe. He could never shake Bobby off him completely.

A man answered the door. Hanbin told him who he was there for. The man smiled and introduced himself as Jiun, Bobby’s older brother, and then ushered Hanbin inside. He directed Hanbin to Bobby’s room.

After taking a moment to breathe – who knows how long – Hanbin knocked on the white wooden door.

It opened.

At first there was only shock to be seen, and then a smile overtook Bobby’s face, all bunny teeth and crescent-moon eyes.

He was real.

Both of them were real.

Hanbin sighed, “Oh thank God,” and grabbed Bobby’s shirt. Bobby backed up to pull Hanbin inside his room, shut the door, and then kissed him when he could stop smiling enough to wrap their lips around each other’s.

(He later learned that apparently it was obvious to Jiun who Hanbin was because Hanbin smelled like peaches.)

-☼-

Hanbin and Bobby sat facing each other in the pool of endless pink and orange. The toes of their shoes touched. Hanbin saw his laces tied and could not believe they were still not tangled together and hanging from a plain old oak tree, that they never would be, that instead they were done up in individual bows and decorated by falling peach petals. That Bobby’s shoelaces were on the other side of them.

“What do cherubs do?” Hanbin asked. They usually avoided the topic of Bobby’s heritage, because they were just trying to be real, human friends, so they talked about mundane human stuff, but curiosity won over this time.

Bobby shrugged and said, “Honestly, not much. It’s more of a social hierarchy thing. We praise God a lot. On Earth we like to promote love, a lot of us are romance junkies, like, for movies, love songs… I write lyrics,” he shyly ducked his head. Cute. He continued, “And we play matchmaker sometimes, but ya know, nothing is guaranteed.”

Hanbin asked, “So you played matchmaker on yourself?”

Bobby giggled and shook his head. “I didn’t intend to. I just made it… in case, you know? We’re all just suckers for love.”

“Why now?” Hanbin asked. He stared at the ground. “Why did you come to me now? Did you know?”

Bobby was quiet and still, and then shook his head. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I just knew when I had you that I finally had you. I didn’t plan it.”

Hanbin asked, “Did anyone?”

Bobby laughed. “I do know many cupids.”

“Don’t answer,” Hanbin quickly stopped him. “Sorry, just don’t say anymore. I like that answer on its own.”

Bobby remained quiet. Hanbin rested his chin on his hands on his knees. He stared doe-eyed at Bobby. The boy had such an honest look on his face, so innocent. He was cherubic, and Hanbin decided that made enough sense. It was just one of many things that Hanbin adored. “I like everything about you.”

Bobby smiled, eyes and nose crinkling, and he looked down. Hanbin involuntarily smiled again. He liked everything, but he liked this look on Bobby in particular.

“They made you well in Heaven,” Hanbin continued, craving more of the pink on Bobby’s cheeks like a bad habit he could not wash down with a chaser. Hanbin thought Bobby was an endless supply of those fruit-flavoured canned sojus you can get at the convenience store. He was just as easy to get drunk on without even realizing you were tipsy at all.

“Look at you,” Hanbin doted on him. His cheek was hot against the back of his hand. “You must have been loved up there.”

Bobby looked up at that. His smile fell, but only a little. Hanbin recognized the expression through the mirror reflection in Bobby’s dark eyes. Bobby said, “Not me,” he shook his head, stopped and held his gaze, unwavering, “you.”

-☼-

Hanbin sat on the ground in an endless forest of peach blossom trees and sun shining through the sturdy and translucent boughs. He cannot even hear the river anymore – maybe he used to hallucinate it calling to him.

Bobby was real. Bobby sat next to him and smiled. Hanbin smiled back. Bobby dropped his head to rest on Hanbin’s shoulder.

But Hanbin was in love and feeling a little needy. He tilted Bobby’s head to place a kiss on his lips. Bobby closed his eyes and kissed back. Bobby tasted like peaches and his lips spoke these words against Hanbin’s: _you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive…_

_You are still alive._

_That’s the point._

_That is all that matters._

_You are precious_

_You are loved._

_Your Heaven is_

_Right_

**_Here._ **

 

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to talk to me in the comments, please feel free. I can listen and try to provide some comfort. Also, feel free to ask for explanations or clarification about the story. Thank you again for being here.
> 
> Notes:  
> \- I don't think I believe in God but I take comfort in the idea of angels. I believe in good energies.  
> \- The peach blossom trees are fictional, yes. I wanted them to be a symbol. I equate cherry blossom trees more to love and sensuality, but peaches more to comfort and fullness. I wanted the forest to be a symbol of healing, not love.  
> \- The words “Why did you come to me now” is a reference to the lyrics in My Type by iKon! And that leads into my next point:  
> \- Bobby and Hanbin are actually each other’s type! This was not just some angel magic. It really was just supposed to be Hanbin. Bobby has a list of criteria for his perfect ‘match’ and Hanbin matching all the criteria was his key into the forest. I could only include some of these things subtly in the story. Here is the list:  
> ~ loves music  
> ~ songwriter (optional)  
> ~ loves family  
> ~ loves animals  
> ~ leader  
> ~ likes to wander/run away  
> ~ feisty but affectionate  
> ~ cute  
> ~ likes pet names  
> ~ dorky  
> ~ peach ass ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)  
> ~ protective  
> ~ will get jealous/protective if someone else flirts with me  
> ~ versatile 
> 
> Some of my favourite feel-better tunes that I have found along the way of my life:  
> ~ Oh Sailor by Mr. Little Jeans  
> ~ I Wanna Get Better by Bleachers (I really like the RAC remix)  
> ~ 1-800-273-8255 by Logic  
> ~ Forrest Gump by Paloalto (lyrics are hard to come by, i had to translate it myself, but the chorus is beautiful)


End file.
